| Author | Message | ||
  Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 674 Registered: 8-2006 |
George, I agree with you that the technical skills of an artist and that artist's ability to artistically interpret and present a subject are very different. A truly great artist must have both. Photorealism seems too restricted to the technical side, impressive though its technical skills may be (which seems to be its primary purpose). It often depends too much on the artistic ability of a photographer to compose a subject for it, or the ability of the eye to serve as a biological camera lens. I think John Ruskin wanted the artist to lean too far in that direction. Ansel Adams may have been an artistic photographer, but the person who simply copies Adams photographs using watercolor pigments for pixels may be devoid of artistic ability of his or her own, and it often shows. | ||
Joe Advanced Member Username: Joe Post Number: 106 Registered: 2-2007 |
I think Oscar's bride of the wind picture had a lot more to do with the instability of his relationship with Alma Mahler.He was crazy about her, she was married, and she held him at arms length and would not give him the commitment he wanted. Alma was anti-semitic but was so seduced by powerful men she married 3 jewish males. There was a good movie about her called appropriately enough Bride of the Wind. It was out a couple of years ago I think. | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Griz, yes, I’ve seen the winter issue of American Artist Watercolor (from another thread). I’m not really a fan of Kokoschka’s work. But, I do think he did a few works that were of the highest quality possible in the art world. But, I don’t think he was consistently good. I agree with you that good photorealism is stunning. But, for me an appreciation of the exacting detail required in a photorealistic painting is negated by the mundane quality of its content (I mean artistic content here, not subject content). As you have suggested – why not just hang the photograph if all you want is a pretty picture of subject content? My view is that a great painting should contain something more than just a photo-visually accurate image of some scene. Sadly, it’s estimated that between 87% and 95% of artists work from photographs today, and it seems most of them are interested in little more than copying the photograph. | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 672 Registered: 8-2006 |
George, You, Eugene and I have given witness yet again to our love of representational watercolor. However, when I see the work of representational watercolorists that moves to the level of photorealism, I feel pain when I consider the exacting detail and the time it requires, which must be exhausting! Did you see the paintings by Denis Milhomme in the Jan/Feb issue of Art of the West? It is beautiful, but it drives me to despair -- why should I even try, when others can paint like that? Then my practical side rises to my defense and asks why one would want to paint something that looks so much like a photograph, when a good photographer could capture much the same image in much less time. Moreover, when I consider the work you did on editing Marian's picture on another thread with a photoediting program, I see we have the mixed blessing of art merging with technology. No wonder art exhibitions are requiring submissions on slides instead of digital images! | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 671 Registered: 8-2006 |
Eugene, in regard to your post 486, I understand the objections you have to much of what is called "modern art." However, you might want to read the article about John Salminen's painting in the winter issue of American Artist watercolor. Even though his origins are in abstract painting, and he still does it, he has some beautiful representational watercolors that are reproduced with the article about his approach. He knows how to draw, and he values design principles, as I know you do. | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 669 Registered: 8-2006 |
George, don't you think some of Oscar Kokoschka's paintings might have been inspired images he imagined he saw in places like Leonardo's wall stains? Maybe his "Bride of the Wind" was inspired by leaves floating on water. | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 658 Registered: 8-2006 |
Joanna, studying under Chaim Potok must have been very special. I would have loved to have studied under C.S. Lewis at Oxford -- in fact, Lewis had a view of greater reality that was much like the creative genius George describes. I think he would have been inclined to agree with George, while at the same time not denigrating the masters of various crafts who have their roles to play as well. | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Sorry, that should be - Oscar Kokoschka | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Eugene, I know what you mean! I visit the local art museum a few times each year to see the various traveling shows. While I’m there I revisit my favorite paintings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century galleries. I almost always skip the modern art galleries because I, like you, find it boring art. But, the last time I visited the art museum I was surprised to find my taste had changed a bit. I wandered into one of the modern galleries and saw a painting by Oscar Kokoshca that I’d seen many times before. I discovered I suddenly had a new appreciation for the painting. I saw details that I had not noticed before. The mood in the painting (a portrait) not only captured my attention but held it for a very long time. I found myself thinking about that painting for days afterward. It had a profound effect on me. I suppose you could say that I, as a resident in the village of the blind, had suddenly seen a flash of light. Sadly, it didn’t last. I still don’t find the whole of modern art at all interesting. | ||
Eugene Senior Member Username: Eugene Post Number: 486 Registered: 8-2006 |
GEORGE, I suppose I'l just have to be content trying to master my craft. I've been trying all my life to understand the so called genius's of the modern art world. I appreciate the importance of underlying abstract design in all painting, I like it in wallpaper and fabrics, but as a framed piece of art --- it's not enough. A trip to MoMA is boring. That big blue and orange Cezanne of the nude dancers leaves me cold.I don't think he could draw...........I know too may artists who distort simply because they cannot draw accurately. And I think Picassos cubist things are downright UGLY. EUGENE | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Not to get picky about this, although most people think my middle name is “picky”, but a creative genius never really masters a tradition of rules, or rebels against anything. The creative genius can see the whole, the sum total, the interaction of all the parts. He understands that rules are produced in an attempt to communicate the structure that supports them, but it is that structure that is his guide, not the rules that are derived from it. The reason the creative genius is thought to be rebelling is because others, the mere masters of their craft, are blind to the larger structure that governs and dictates the rules. There is an old saying that in the village of the blind the one who has sight is the outcast. | ||
Joanna Senior Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 213 Registered: 10-2006 |
CP was one of my English teachers--to expand on that, in one class we discussed how one first has to master rules, then the true artist breaks them and makes new ones for himself. But first you have to master the rules. This was before he wrote Asher Lev. That quote from Asher Lev brought back nice memories... | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 654 Registered: 8-2006 |
One of my favorite novels is Chaim Potok’s wonderful book My Name is Asher Lev. Asher, a promising young painter, is apprenticed to an experienced older artist. Asher is eager to break new ground, to make his own mark. He is frustrated with his mentor’s requirement that he endlessly practice the lines and strokes and styles of the great artists of the past. In response to Asher’s resistance to this discipline, his teacher tells him that art “is not a toy,” it is “not a child scrawling on a wall.” Art, his teacher explains, is “a tradition.” He says to Asher: “You are entering a religion called painting…. And I will force you to master it…. No one will listen to what you have to say unless they are convinced you have mastered it. Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or to rebel against it” (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972, p. 213). |
